


Fire on the Horizon

by Life_giver



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4990609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Life_giver/pseuds/Life_giver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He would merely be known as Alexander's Persian boy, his catamite and Alexander would never yearn to be with him in the afterlife as he did Hephaistion. He had often heard them talk about these things when they thought they were alone, how they would follow one another into death when the time came. History had a habit of repeating its blood-soaked romances. That was one truth he knew well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire on the Horizon

 

 

 

Peritas lies at his feet, a ball of fur to warm his toes in, and for the time being he's content to let the pup make his home there. The sun begins to climb higher in the sky as he drowses, the rays just touching the floor around the overly large bed. He had been dreaming of the golden fields of his childhood, a thing long dead, and of his father, also long put to rest. The bed still smells of fresh grasses and oils and beneath that, something sweet. Alexander clings to everything he touches, holds fast with a grip that one cannot break free from.

Outside, he can hear the world coming back to life. The shouts of the men echo from below and the smell of horses wafts in on the light breeze. It has been so long since he's been allowed this small luxury of hiding away beneath heavy cloth and finely embroidered pillows.

For months he has slipped between piles of musty furs to warm Alexander for a few meager hours only to be woken just past dawn every day for the long march. He has never minded, would never dare think of complaining because it was those long nights in foreign lands that he thinks of most often-- the times when Alexander needs him most, heavy with other men's blood, with the world's weariness reflected in his eyes.

He turns over, letting the blankets slip from his body, and Peritas makes a soft noise of protest before burrowing himself further into his self-made tunnel. His feet are cold now in the crisp morning air and he regrets moving at all, wishes for a moment that he could stay here until Alexander returns to him in the evening.

A day of intrigues and tedious dealings awaits and none of it seems worth the price of cold feet and watching his lover quietly pledge himself to another in the guise of bent heads over dusty maps and plans he has no part in. This was business for the Macedonians as usual, not for a country boy turned catamite who only happened to warm the bed of Alexander in the cold winter months when loneliness was a thousand leagues long and no city would ever be enough to dispel it.

 

 

"I thought I might find you here."

The voice startles him and he draws his overcoat tighter around himself as he looks up, surprised that the king would follow him here. Alexander settles down beside him and he takes only a moment to look at him before tilting his face to the sky, searching the heavens restlessly. Alexander is only a young man, still in the flush of youth, vibrant with the world he has been handed and is dangerously determined to keep. Bagoas understands why his people had so readily bent the knee in the face of this restless power. He would bend the knee, make the prostration every night of his life if it kept Alexander's eyes on him. That sort of attention could start wars, _had_ started wars in the past.

He wonders how many of those loyal to Alexander have followed their king and stand, watching and waiting for him just out of sight. He is a Persian after all, capable of anything, especially of slitting the throat of a conqueror as he sits unprotected beside the conquered. Alexander sleeps with a dagger beneath his pillow at night, a Macedonian trait, Bagoas has come to discover, and he is sure Alexander is well-armed now. He remembers his fingers touching the sharp blade as he lay beside Alexander in bed watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. But using that dagger had never once occurred to him. Stopping the breath of this man who sets his skin afire would have been impossible.

“Ishtar is bright tonight,” Bagoas says, eyes moving from Alexander to the skies, where the dawn is just beginning to kiss the night. He feels Alexander shift beside him and he smiles as Alexander points to the morning star, shining to the East, his Ishtar in the heavens.

“Venus,” Alexander says softly and Bagoas looks at him again, watching his face come alive in the changing light, “she is beautiful, isn't she?”

Their respective goddess hangs low above their heads and as Bagoas tilts his face to the sky again, he feels lips against his cheek. His heart pounds against his ribcage and he closes his eyes when Alexander takes his chin and slides his mouth to his lips slowly. He would never get used to this, he thinks as he sighs against Alexander's mouth and feels the kiss deepen. His heart nearly jumps from his chest and runs away from him with the press of their skin and so he pulls away before his breath leaves him as well. Alexander smiles as Bagoas lays himself back against the grass, skin burning, breath coming fast and nervous. Alexander leans over him, blotting out the bright star, and when he frames Alexander's face with his fingers, he finds them trembling.

_Kiss me._

_Touch me._

But Alexander merely brushes his cheek with his thumb affectionately and then lies down beside him, hands just touching the skin of his wrist. Bagoas lets his hand rest palm up and after a moment, Alexander slides his hand into place. He is like a young boy on the brink of delirious love. Here, away from the world of intrigues, where every gesture holds meaning and every glance must be tightly controlled, he feels free of courtly duty.

Abandoning poise, he sits up and leans over Alexander, letting his hair slide from his shoulder and fall in a shimmering curtain around their faces as he kisses him firmly. Alexander laughs softly beneath him, amused at his sudden forcefulness. He slips a leg over Alexander's waist and lets his teeth sink into Alexander's bottom lip playfully, fingers tugging at the soft curls of his golden hair. Alexander always makes him restless with desire, even in the face of gentle affection.

“You are fire,” Alexander breathes, brushing his hair away from his face, and Bagoas knowing the truth of things, thinks,

_No, Alexander. You are the fire in my veins, the fire that moves the world._

 

 

He is good at melting into walls, a shadow in the firelight, only seen when wanted or needed. He slips away and out and hopes that in some small way he is missed for a moment. But only for a moment. Hephaistion's voice is deeper than his lord's, maybe even a bit more commanding. When Alexander enters a room, the respect is already there, as natural as breathing, as absolute as knowing the sun will rise and set again tomorrow. When Hephaistion enters a room, his voice carries, and all look to him and listen in surprise that such a voice exists. It has nothing to do with Alexander's love of him.

Even Bagoas looks now, his slippered feet stopping mid-step. He can just see the back of Alexander's head, gold catching the flickering firelight, still fine with oil and set upon with a heavy diadem. His breath catches in his throat as Hephaistion reaches up and takes the crown between his hands, lifting it away. The fire still roaring in the brazier so near to Bagoas is nothing compared to the heat in his cheeks as he stands at the entrance of the hall. For a moment, he is Phthonus and if there had been fire in his veins, he would have melted the very wall he held onto for support.

He waits to see what this bold man will do next, and he isn't startled, as he had been the first time, as Hephaistion takes his lord's face between his hands and kisses him warmly. Alexander tilts his face up, suddenly the eromenos, no longer the King. And so it was that way between them. And so it is. They have never grown out of their boyish roles with one another.

_I will kill you._

He still has the taste of copper on his tongue, still knows the feeling of sliding steel into flesh, the easy way it slices through until hitting hard bone, chipping it with the force of the thrust, the last breath of a man, the feeling of bruising fingers around his neck going slack. There are many ways of going about getting rid of something that stands in the way, but for this one, it would have to be quiet, an accident. There are too many enemies, too many sharp eyes and loose tongues in this place for anything else.

He watches them for a while longer, letting the fury eat its slow way through his chest until he aches. He turns away from them, leaves them to their wasted youth. Not even death would separate them.

Alexander would raise this man higher in the end, deify him if he could. Alexander would be changed beyond recognition without this man by his side, and no death would ever be good enough for Hephaistion, especially not by the hand of a spurned lover. Alexander would know, and would hate him for it, and that would be a worse death. He would let the crows feast on him before he turned away the love he had been handed.

_You must live._

 

 

She hates him with a passion that is dangerous, and he tolerates her with an indifference that makes enemies spring from the most unlikely places. Her eyes follow him around the court and he pretends not to notice, keeping his head high, imagining her little more than the other whores lounging around the place.

And yet he's taken to letting others taste his food, more for Alexander's peace of mind than his own. She had already tried her hand at poisoning him, something he hadn't lowered himself to in his most desperate moments of fighting for something he'd never truly have. Didn't she know? They had arrived too late to a battlefield already won, and the victor was a deity to be worshipped in the eyes of a god himself.

She would not make the same mistake twice, and yet still he accepts each plate as it is deemed untouched and he makes sure that Alexander sees as well. His fingers still run their way against the insides of his clothes, searching and finding nothing, and he makes an effort of charming a ring of safety around himself in the form of powerful allies. It had been this way at Darius' court and though the Greeks and Macedonians were of a different ilk, dangerously, perhaps ignorantly loyal, Alexander's wife is one of his own kind, eager to keep a place on this teetering dias they are all scrambling to hold on to.

_"She has the look of you."_

He had been told this once, fingers making presumptions in the strands of his hair. Alexander had chosen her for that spitfire anger, the way she would tear someone limb for limb for taking what was hers, a useful trait in a wife of the Great King. And though he would never admit willingly, Bagoas liked to fantasize that something in her face, the lithe way she moved, that unpredictable temper, reminded Alexander of someone else.

She had sent a servant to him a week before the ceremony that had bound her to Alexander, an invitation to dance at her wedding as if he were a poppet to be strung along for the entertainment of her people. He had stared at the invitation and laughed at the spiteful way in which she had decided to prod at him. The invitation had been meant to lower him but it had only served to make him cautious and he felt a sort of pity for her. He supposes he would have done the same if he had been in her place, a barbarian to Alexander's people as he was respectively, but she was also the first wife with expectations she probably would not meet.  He had known then, with that invitation in his hand, that Phthonus had tainted them both, made them reckless in their shared passion. His dances are for Alexander only in the dead of night, clad in nothing but the long hair that falls down his back. Alexander’s wife would know nothing of that ritual.

She is the first of many, and with each new one, the danger dwindles. They file past and still the only one worth glancing at is Roxana with her fiery eyes and quick tongue-- the woman who will carry the empire in her womb one day.

The unassailable makes his place known in more subtle ways. He'd never slipped poisoned food to Bagoas, or tried slipping a knife into his back in the middle of the night, a thing that would have been easily done. It would have been nothing to make it seem like an accident with the wolves not far from the palace and too many wishing their place above a barbarian catamite. Hephaistion worked quietly if he worked. After all, he had already taken what was his and left only crumbs for the beggars.

 

 

He sits brushing out gold and letting it catch the firelight prettily as Alexander's voice fills the space between them, soft and low, a thing of power in the field, but something soft and thoughtful in the bedroom. He had washed Alexander's hair, pressing kisses to his temples and lips, until he'd finally been pulled into the bath with him.

The scent of his hair now permeates the air, saffron and myrrh, and he idly wonders if tonight is a night for the oil he enjoys rubbing into the sore muscles of Alexander's arms and back. Sometimes Alexander has a mind for this, and sometimes he is in a state that requires less art and more passion. Bagoas had learned to please each side of his lord with a delicate fluidity.

He leans over Alexander's shoulder, silently reading along in his book of Kyros and lets his fingers drift down the sides of Alexander's body. There are marks against Alexander's neck, deep blood bruises and beside those, the marks of teeth. He wonders if they are hers or his. When his lips drift along Alexander's jawline and down to his neck, he carefully avoids those declarations of passion.

He makes his mark on Alexander in other ways. He winds his fingers through the curls of Alexander's hair and lets his mouth smile against his shoulder when the book is placed on the table and Alexander's hands tangle in his hair to bring him up for a kiss.

"Come here," Alexander breathes, and he does, slipping easily into his lap and tasting the tart wine against his lips. The wine had been flowing all evening and even Bagoas had indulged in a cup of the Bactrian fire. He can feel Alexander beneath him, all muscle and tension, and yearning, and his words shift easily from rough Greek into the sensual curves of Persian. His language was made for this, _he_ was made for this. He whispers breathlessly into the shell of Alexander's ear and smiles when his Alexander grips him tighter.

There would always be one thing he possessed that Alexander could not get from his tall general. Here in this room they are surrounded by Persian things. Beautiful silk hangings, intricate weavings beneath their feet, robes of vivid colors, one of which he pushes from Alexander's shoulders impatiently. It's the rich color of the evening sky, shot through with gold. Alexander himself smells of Persia now. There is a passionate love affair between Alexander and the East, and he has found exactly what he needs here in the form of flesh.

He sighs into Alexander's neck and gives him everything and more. He lays himself bare and offers up the best parts of himself in sacrifice, wanting the same in return, and knowing there will never be a substitute for this feeling in his chest.

He leaves two long scratches between the blades of Alexander's shoulders and he wonders which one of them will find the marks in the morning.

 

 

He watches the weddings from a makeshift pavilion, far enough away from the proceedings to be inconspicuous, but close enough to see the elated expressions on the men's faces. The women's dresses are beautiful, elaborate, their veils worked through with silk, hiding faces drawn with any number of emotions. Armor glints harshly in the sunlight and he has to look away many times. It is enough to see Alexander here once again, with his hand tied to the line of Darius, but to witness such a mass movement is overwhelming.

He watches Hephaistion's face, guarded, his smile hiding the truth behind this whole procession. Drypetis is a beautiful girl and her sister, the one that holds Alexander's hand is even more so. But it would have been Achilles' hand Patroclus held in his own if such a thing could have been. And yet, the fact that the children this woman bears Hephaistion will be cousins to Alexander's own offspring looms over all of their heads. It must give Hephaistion some pleasure to know that. It is a proud declaration, a shout to the people standing here in their finery watching Greeks and Macedonians mix their blood with Persians, that Alexander will always belong to Hephaistion in the most important ways.

And all Bagoas can think is,

_their children will be related._

The knife has never dulled, never ceased its constant twisting in the pit of his chest, and he takes it as he always has. What else is there to do? He loves Alexander too much to push his way to the forefront. Hours before the ceremony, as he had helped Alexander dress, knowing he was giving him away yet again, Alexander had taken his face between his hands and kissed him softly.

"It only brings us closer," He had whispered and Bagoas had smiled for him, flimsy things that these smiles were of late, and nodded. He stopped fooling himself long ago that Alexander's love for him in any way rivaled his devotion to Hephaistion.

That there is love between Bagoas and Alexander, of that there is never any doubt. Alexander came to him for comfort after the screams of dying men had calmed, and it was with him that Alexander sat, pouring his heart out on lonely nights in desert wastelands. Alexander dresses himself in Persian finery and loves his people all the more for loving a Persian boy in the quiet of the night. Bagoas is known, and all acknowledge him, if not envy him, for his status, one rank beneath Hephaistion. Bagoas thinks it must be a kind of relief for Hephaistion, that he is no longer alone in this silent lover's quarrel between Alexander and his men.

But the reason behind this whole affair still stands solid. It is for Hephaistion that Alexander does this thing. It is also for the men, for Alexander's vision of a mixed and robust race. But it is mostly for Hephaistion. They will be woven together for generations, a tapestry of blood mixed beneath skin so like and so unlike their own. Perhaps a descendant of their blood will wear the crown of Macedon and Persia one day. And so Bagoas places a date on his tongue, good Persian fare at this wedding of weddings, and washes the sweetness down with a cup of bitter Macedonian wine.

 

 

He keeps his head tilted in Hephaistion's presence. Never looks to the feet that stand facing one to the other, slippered and sandaled, clean and blood-stained. He isn't Peritas, lying at the foot of Alexander's bed. He is the favored lover of a King, just as surely as this man is.

"You're needed."

The words must be like chewing on nails for Hephaistion, they must sting and leave his mouth raw and bleeding as he looks at Bagoas with only veiled irritation, always veiled. An outward blow would be too crude for Hephaistion, who is always dignified and a notch above the best of men.

"You told me to stay away," his voice is tempered steel.

Hephaistion seems taken aback for a moment, so used to the soft honey Bagoas usually offers, a compliment to his exterior, a shroud to the knife he keeps hidden in the folds of his robe when Alexander is away.

And indeed he had been warned away, but had only listened because the point of a spear to the tender flesh of his neck had been convincing enough. They would have never dared. If he had pushed the sarissa away with the back of his hand and swept his way through, the gaurds would have had no choice but to grant him entrance, but he had held back, as had Roxana, as had Hephaistion in the end, because their love for him, their respect for his wishes would always override the yearning, the aching, of their own hearts.

"He has not eaten. He sits, moaning, and crying. He tried to cut the vein in his neck while I stood there."

Hephaistion shows his hand-- the deep cut in the palm of it, and Bagoas imagines Alexander's lips wet with this man's blood. Imagines the tears Alexander cried against this man's skin, and the way Hephaistion must have handled him awkwardly, unused to such strength being laid at his feet like a cloak too dirty and heavy to wear any longer.

"He would never--"

"You don't know him the way I do," Hephaistion tells him in a rush, and Bagoas' eyes flash and his heart drops into his stomach. That is the problem here isn’t it? Alexander and Hephaistion will forever be two boys who had loved one another a lifetime ago, and would continue loving one another into the next. How could a barbarian know the inner dealings of a deity?

He nods his head once, face burning with anger, and follows Hephaistion out through the scattering of tents and into the largest. Hephaistion leaves him there, after making sure that the sleeping mass of blankets on the bed is indeed only sleeping. Bagoas watches him go warily. In the courts he had been brought up from, kindness, if that was what this could be called, would have had consequences beneath the frills.

But the moment he kneels beside the bed and feels the heat in Alexander's pale face, he knows that this isn’t kindness at all. This is a desperate plea from Hephaistion to someone who loves Alexander as much as he does. Hephaistion doesn’t care who it is that makes Alexander eat, makes him live, as long as it is done. They will not leave this tent any friendlier with one another for this.

"Al'skander," He whispers, dipping a cloth into the stale water beside the bed and bathing Alexander's forehead with it. He had known he would worry himself into a sickness but lying down to die over the death of one man when countless lives had been lost at Alexander's hand had truly perplexed Bagoas.

"Death of a friend," Hephaistion had shouted into his face only hours ago, his fingers gnarled into fists at his side as if at any moment he would shake Bagoas for his stupidity.

If he had been taller, stronger, or at least graced with something sharp, he would have cut Hephaistion down for the insult. He is still a silly child in Hephaistion's mind, harmless, but naive, and to be pushed aside during moments such as this.

They had left one another, left Alexander in his own tears and sweat, both brimming with livid anger. His anger had still not cooled when Hephaistion sought him out, ready to lay his weapons and words at Bagoas' feet for the sake of Alexander. He had cursed Hephaistion's name as the sun set against the desert, but as night deepens, he thanks him quietly.

Alexander isn't here with him as he calls for fresh water, and bathes him gently. He is off on a journey that Bagoas hopes he will return from as water is pressed between his chapped lips. He does all that he can, and when he disrobes and slips between the furs to warm his body against Alexander's, he feels the fever break, and Alexander sighs into his shoulder.

"Who let you in here?" Alexander mumbles affectionately, recognizing him, arms and legs twining themselves around his own in sleep.

The wind is picking up outside and the sound of a harness and the soft mumblings of the people around the tent, drift in through the canvas walls. He can feel their energy, the restlessness of the people and the animals, but he isn't in a mind to leave Alexander just yet.

"Sshh," Bagoas breathes, brushing the hair from his damp forehead. He hears footsteps during the night and in the fog of sleep, he knows that it's Hephaistion coming to check that his plan has worked, that Alexander still breathes because the Persian boy had willed him to.

 

 

"Who is he that he can control you so," a whisper against evil as the torches are extinguished by the rain, leaving curls of smoke in the air. Like a perfect day turned thunderstorm, Alexander's emotions swell and settle with Hephaistion.

"He wants to go and so let him," he curses, toeing the ground with his shoe and then slipping from the pavilion. He draws his hood over his head and ducks out into the rain, following the sounds of anger across the garden and into the long Eastern hallway. He knows he will be needed once Hephaistion is out of the way and he will make himself accessible.

He stops as the sounds become louder than the thunderstorm outside. He sees them in the entryway, stone gods, grappling for love, for control, for mercy. The rain leaves tracks down Bagoas' cheeks as he watches Alexander grasp Hephaistion’s face between his hands and kiss him roughly.

He has seen this sort of kiss passed between them many times before, but there is anger and passion and grief in this kiss and Bagoas feels it in the deepest part of his chest. Hephaistion falls back against the wall behind him, grasping Alexander's cloak at the shoulders and wrenching it askew. Bagoas feels his breath leave him as he stands abandoned in the dark, the scent of animals and gods mingling in the drafty halls.

"Do you still love me?" Alexander's voice is too loud and it bounds from the vaulted ceiling, echoing down the halls so that the servants put away their work and disappear into other areas of the grounds. Usually so quiet about their devotion to one another, this loud grappling is shocking.

"Until the day my body is burned." Hephaistion replies without hesitation. Hephaistion's devotion to Alexander is as sure as knowing the sun will rise and set as it has since the beginning of time. And yet, Alexander's resolve crumbles at the merest slight from Hephaistion. He is not unlike a child when it comes to needing a love set in stone.

Later, as Bagoas is drying the rain from his face and ringing it from his hair, watching the water pool against the tiles beneath his feet, he hears Alexander enter his room without knocking, something that is rare even when he commands most of the known world. He respects Bagoas as he would Hephaistion or even his wives and he had always asked before proceeding.

He had set up a house for Bagoas not ten leagues from his own apartments. Bagoas now has a household of his own, and the freedom he had so craved since he was first sold into slavery is now his. Alexander has filled this new space of his with innumerable books so that he can continue his Greek studies on his own. He is kept better than the Queen some said, and he finds himself all the more cautious for those rumors.

He watches Alexander cross the room, his hair and clothes soaked, his face a tightly draw mask. He smells of rain and smoke and Bagoas feels his throat constrict. He sees them once more, Hephaistion and Alexander, holding onto one another, demanding fealty and sacrifice… and love. Bagoas would sacrifice a hundred lives to be in Hephaistion's place then. But there has never been any need to demand a loyalty he has always given to Alexander willingly.

"Bagoas," Alexander whispers, pulling him into his arms, and he isn't like Hephaistion who can withhold love if he so wishes, even with the taste of Hephaistion lingering on his lover's lips. His love pours from his hands and body and the way he looks to Alexander for sustenance, for love in return. It has always been this way and will remain so.

"I love you," the words fall from his lips, Persian silk dripping against the side of Alexander's neck as Alexander holds him close and the selfish beast inside of him hopes that it strikes something true in Alexander. He will always be here to drink of when all else has fallen away. A safe harbor in the storm, though he knows that really…  he is the one who is drifting against Alexander's shore.

Alexander knows the words he whispers, he had taught them to him soon after Alexander had taken him to bed and Alexander smiles at them now, hoists him up, long limbs and all and they fall back against the scented pillows and silks. His hair wets the fine cloth and his own resolve breaks. The anger he had felt before with his ears full of Alexander's pleading against Hephaistion's stone wall, melts against the heat of their skin. He is water against this bed, scorched dry by Alexander's fire.

"Love me," he groans, pushing his head back as Alexander's hands slide down his body, and Alexander does love him, in fractured touches and bruised kisses, and Bagoas gives him everything that Hephaistion refuses to when Alexander is being selfish. Bagoas feeds that tumultuous desire in Alexander and takes a little for himself. He can be selfish as well.

He keeps Alexander for himself the whole night through, sweaty and whispering confessions against his damp collar bone. His bed suffers the worst of Alexander's pent up energy and the sheets end up strewn on the floor. He smiles and stretches languidly beneath Alexander's hungry eyes. Even in the deepest hours of the night he can still pull the lust from Alexander's body and tame it. He knows that Hephaistion can not rule that area of Alexander, at least not alone.

There will always be ghosts in this place. Alexander looks at him now, his chin cradled in his hand and Bagoas knows that he wants to talk. Their heated skin turns  chill and Bagoas pulls the blankets around them, hoping against hope that Alexander's words will keep until morning.

"Should I have let him go? There is work to be done here," Alexander says into the dying light. Bagoas has given him counsel before, on the ways of his people, of court traditions, but he has come to the wrong lover for this sort of pillow talk, and yet he holds his tongue.

He would soon have to gutter the fire and let the cold make its home here. They both know who Alexander speaks of. Alexander had once told Bagoas that he crept about like a cat, that he wasn't sure where his eyes and ears would be from one moment to the next. It had been said affectionately, but there were times when Alexander was careful with what he said, the incident in the hallway hadn't been one of those times, and now wounded as he is, speaks too freely in Bagoas' presence.

"Maybe it is a good thing. He's restless like you when he is kept here for too long," Bagoas chooses his words carefully, each word is pushed from between his lips slowly, painfully. Cutting the veins in his own wrist would be a more pleasant task.

_Curse him._

He knows that this isn't about campaigns and territories anymore. With Roxana, Hephaestian had been sent away for a time under the guise of business, and so on and so forth. After Parysatis there had been no more long nights away to lick his wounds, and now that Hephaestian had grown tired of this war game, he had begun using it against Alexander. Bagoas has seen this sort of lover's quarrel once before. They are still like young boys this way.

_Send him away_ , he wants to plead.

"He is as stubborn as always," Alexander says.

Only this morning Alexander had kissed the sleep from his eyes, confessed a life-time of half-truths into his ear, coaxing him out of dreams and into his arms, though Bagoas had never had any need of coaxing. He always went willingly.

"Yes, Al'skander," He says quietly, drifting between this morning and last night when Alexander had pulled him into a corner playfully, as if they were merely youths, pulling at each other, eager for a moment alone.

"He defies me on purpose."

Alexander had caught him at washing his hair some days ago, and afterwards he had danced for his King, naked and still damp from the bath, slow and lazy like Alexander after a hard won battle.

"It is only restlessness. The whole place is restless in this cold. " Restless with disuse and suspicion.

He can hear the walls groaning with lethargy, waiting for the household to move on as they inevitably will in time. Alexander is gathering his forces, waiting to spring, but the question of where to is still a thing only Hephaistion knows. Alexander's mind is a tightly guarded treasure.

Bagoas offers what little comfort he can now, even as his mind wanders far away, burrowing himself beneath furs and smelling the thick smoke of campfires and the stench of horses on the air. He would always rather be there than here, caught between Alexander and a man who would not be turned away.

"I would not hurt you," Alexander suddenly breathes, and he realizes his face has dropped and his eyes sting as he focuses them on the embroidered flowers of the coverlet. He feels Alexander's hand on his cheek and then his fingers wind themselves into his hair.

_It is too late for all that_. For secrecy and apologies. They have all known their places for years. It may have taken Bagoas some time to learn where he stood, but he now knows it is solidly behind Hephaistion for all time.

_I cannot be hurt. I am stone._

It had hurt when he'd seen his father executed in front of his eyes, his face a gaping, bloody mess. It had hurt the first time he'd given his body away for coin he'd never even see. And it had hurt the first time he'd been slapped by a king and realized he could be replaced on a whim with a word, and that his beauty would not hold forever.

But this, this is a slow torture. He has never felt pain of this sort, as if being burned alive would be easier than looking at Alexander and knowing he would always be running after him and scraping his knees.

He would always receive Alexander's love, and he would be sent pretty things and hold a title until he was old or until Alexander had passed into legend. He would merely be known as Alexander's Persian boy, his catamite and Alexander would never yearn to be with him in the afterlife as he did Hephaistion. He had often heard them talk about these things when they thought they were alone, how they would follow one another into death when the time came. History had a habit of repeating it's blood-soaked romances. That was one truth he knew well.

 

 

He remembers clearly the first time he'd known that Hephaistion was more than general, more than constant companion, not just a shadow at Alexander's shoulder. The way Hephaistion had cradled Alexander's head in his hands and kissed him firmly on the mouth had shocked him to the core. He hadn't known the ways of Macedonians and Greeks then, had been fed on tales of unnatural behaviors as a child. Barbarians were never expected to follow proper decor, and yet he had thought Alexander above the rest as he'd settled into life as the favorite of another god. Hephaistion was the deviant as he walked beside the King and talked and laughed with him as an equal.

He'd begun to understand the way of things eventually but it had been like flaying skin. That long year of grief and confusion, and secret anger was branded into his skin. He had learned to follow Alexander as everyone else, love trumping all other things, and he side stepped Hephaistion now with a smooth face.

He remembered the first time he'd heard his own name on Hephaistion's mouth, and known that he would inevitably be Alexander's. Alexander had been quietly circling him for weeks, and Bagoas had been looking, glancing, wondering when the King would end the game and give them both what they wanted. He had already tired of waiting in the wings, unsure of his place in this strange new setting.

"He is a pretty thing," Hephaistion had been walking with Alexander in the gardens and Bagoas had been helping the women bring fresh linens to Alexander's rooms for lack of anything else to do.

Alexander had been adamant about staying Bagoas' restless hand. Alexander's boy shouldn't sully his hands, shouldn't work like the servitude he had saved Bagoas from. But he'd always kept busy throughout his life. It kept him from thinking of other things, of stewing on intrigues he could not change. Keeping an ear open in the courts had also been his saving grace at times and helping the women or the other eunuchs was always a sure way to get a good deal of gossip and news.

A person learned things by watching and listening in this place and he had learned a great deal the day he'd eavesdropped on the King and his general. He'd slipped out of sight as Alexander and Hephaistion stopped just on the edge of the gardens, leaning against one another for support. The Macedonian wine had been flowing through the halls all evening, as usual, and he could smell the stench of it permeating the linens held in the crook of his arm.

"You'll have to be more specific than that. This place is full of pretty things." Alexander had gestured around the palace, as if conjuring into thin air the delicate, tittering girls and shy boys of the harem. Alexander had laughed at Hephaistion's raised eyebrow.

“Bagoas. You know very well whom I mean."

He would not touch the harem. He wanted fire and spirit, nothing beaten and broken.

Alexander had leaned into Hephaistion more at the mention of his name and Bagoas had felt his heart lurch, his stomach drop. There was a moment in which neither man spoke and then Alexander had laughed again and Hephaistion had made more of an effort to keep him from slipping to the ground. It was appalling how these men had let their King be seen in this state and he'd had to fight back the urge to go to Alexander, to push Hephaistion away, and bring him back to his room. He hadn't known then the dangerous love affair Alexander had been carrying on with his casks of wine and how fruitless it was to try and keep Alexander from the things he loved.

"He is… beautiful. But let's not speak of this here. Too many ears in this place," Alexander had agreed softly, and Bagoas' heart had dropped with his stomach as Alexander and his beloved general moved on, their arms thrown around one another, leaving him for another day, another night.

He'd slipped away soon after, his face burning, leaving the linens behind with the restless women. Alexander's feelings would be all over the palace soon enough and he'd be ridiculed for his supposed seduction. Bagoas, always the object of some king's desire, and now he would be kneeling at a conqueror’s feet, and he felt no shame in that. He would kneel and he would kiss the back of Alexander's hand in submission because he was young and stupid, and _in love_.

 

 

The place is alive with the sounds of men suiting themselves for war. He stands before Alexander and helps him with his cuirass, savoring the precious few moments they have left together. Soon Alexander will be marching away into the dust and Bagoas will be left with the women and other camp followers again, wondering if their men will return to them.

Alexander's face is set gravely. He knows that he is sending men to their deaths and the curiosity and open smile that Bagoas so loved about Alexander's face is hidden now. He will be in the thick of the battle with the rest of his soldiers, a thing unheard of in Bagoas’ world, and they both know that there is always a chance he may not return. The tent smells of heady incense and rituals to gods Bagoas does not know. His own hair smells of smoke and haoma.

Before Alexander had risen, before the sun had even begun to crest the mountains, he had slipped away to appease Mithra. Perhaps, just once more, he would be allowed this brief happiness he had stumbled upon. Mayhap, he would see Alexander once again, blood-stained and ragged, weary, seeking him out for a bath. Alone in the tent, Alexander would let him slip off the linen breastplate he had so carefully fitted into place, a barrier against that delicate beating heart. And he would, only for a moment, rest against Bagoas, and the smell of iron would set Bagoas' own heart to racing.

Now he hefts the lion helm in his hands, but does not immediately hand it over. He waits until Alexander leans forward and kisses him, their lips pressing gently, lingering, before he places the lion over golden hair, blotting out the sun for a time and turning Alexander's face into a fierce snarl.

 

_Country_

 

The desert sand gets into everything, blows into his eyes and nose, and clings to his hair and clothes. It's in the food and the water that he's been rationing for days now. The taste of it dries his tongue and does nothing to satisfy his thirst.

_He's gone mad._

He thinks as he surveys the baggage train, trailing off into the distance, growing smaller by the day. He wraps the once fine cloth around his face, a useless attempt to keep the sand at bay. The wind whips the scarf away a moment later and he lets it go. When he sneezes, dust stains the cloth of his sleeve a dirty brown. At night, he dreams of lying himself down in the sand until he becomes just another dune in the distance, forgotten like the hundreds that have already been left behind, bleak offerings to a hungry god.

When Bagoas searches the horizon, mirages of fire appear there. He had dreamt of water last night, water running down his chin, down his arms, cleaning the dust away in pure streaks. He had dreamt of Alexander bathed in blood from a dusty battlefield and his own hands, tipping the water from the bath across his back. There had been fire on the horizon in that dream as well, fire in Alexander's eyes. It was dangerous, a thing that had been spreading for years now as they followed behind the sun with tired feet. And now they were seeing it's destructive end.

He lays his head on his crossed arms and weeps for the fallen, the ravaged, the burnt until hands heave him up and shake the hysteria from him. He chokes on his tears and the dust blowing endlessly, a hell of their own making.

There is a burning in his chest as he looks up at the man holding him upright. The sun is behind him, making a shadow of his face, but even now, he can see why Alexander chooses to love him, why, perhaps, he can’t help but to love him.

_Never mind, Mother. He too is Alexander_ , Alexander had once told Sisygambis with a laugh.

"Cover your face,” Hephaistion tells him gently, his hands picking up his forgotten scarf and helping him to tie it back into place.

And after all, this was what he thinks Alexander has chosen the Persian for, wasn't it? Best to save this pretty face of his, his most important asset. He wants to let the hate work its way out from his chest, into the fingers that hold onto Hephaistion's arm for purchase, but he only hangs his head and lets Hephaistion help him onto his horse as if he is a woman.

He is too tired of fighting, too heavy with grief to push against Hephaistion any longer. He twists his fingers into the mane of Hephaistion's horse and breathes in the scent of sweat and dust while the sun creeps higher into the sky, burning them all to ashes.

 

    

_King_

 

The pain in his scalp is nothing compared to the wrenching of his chest, the sting of salt beneath his eyelids as he kneels before his King and begs for mercy, for understanding, for things that Alexander cannot hear with the blood pumping it's way through his ruined heart.

Bagoas is babbling in his own language and he isn't even sure that Alexander understands, if he can even hear him. Alexander is seeing ghosts as he looks down at him, his eyes wild and his hair too much like a lion's mane in the firelight.

_He's gone mad._

He remembers a long ago sting to his cheek. He had misplaced his foot that night as well with another king, in another life, a different world, and he had known the punishment then, had known the rules and the way of things. Here, he does not know what to do. There is an unpredictable fire in Alexander now, something he has only seen once before, and he fears that he is in the path of a storm only just begun.

When Alexander releases his hair, he presses his lips to the warm earth and lets the salt spill, turning the dust to mud beneath his hands. It isn't long before he feels hands, roughened from the sword, against his face, and he looks up to see Alexander's face, wet and drawn.

_I told you to live._

And yet Hephaistion had gone ahead of Alexander, leaving him to imagine enemies circling him, pulling him down into madness. His grief is as unassailable as Hephaistion had always been.

"Bagoas, I'm sorry," he whispers and suddenly he is himself again, the darkness passing as quickly as it had come on.

Bagoas picks himself from the ground, and pushes himself into arms he hasn't felt since that dreaded day when the skies had opened up and Alexander had lain across Hephaistion's cold body until he was forcibly pulled away. He isn't sure if the trembling comes from his own body or that of Alexander who grips him tightly. He curls into him, delicate shoulders folding inward as if Alexander will crush them like the wings of a moth.

When the flood comes, it's in the form of whispered words against the skin of his neck and he presses his eyes closed against the madness. They haven't touched each other in weeks and now that Eros has come to claim them again, Bagoas struggles to catch his breath. Desperation hangs in the air above the bed as he buries his face into a shoulder now lined with endless scars.

 

_Earth_    

 

“He wasn't himself in the end,” Ptolemy tells him softly. The firelight turns their skin to gold, dances on the walls and plays with their curling shadows.

 “He was always Alexander,” Bagoas replies, just as softly. _Even at the very end_.

_To the strongest_ , Alexander had commanded them all. Bagoas had been at his bedside holding his trembling hand in those last moments, knew the words to be true though most had pretended not to hear them, creating ridiculous names from Alexander's dying words, mangling them to their own benefit.

His fingers grasp the small figure of ivory and slip it into a groove on the playing board and wait for Ptolemy to make a move. He wonders briefly when he had begun to set Alexander's name down so carelessly. He remembered a time when he had let Alexander's name slip from his tongue like the most reverent of prayers in the curling accent of Persia because it had made Alexander smile.

The first time he had thrown away Alexander's enormous title and whispered his name intimately is still ingrained into his memory, into his very skin. His face heats even now as he remembers. He realizes now that the accent of his youth had been polished away completely and it leaves an empty feeling in his chest. He looks away from the board game and watches their dancing shadows for a long moment. Ptolemy looks up at him curiously.

“You knew him better than most.”

“Than most,” Bagoas agrees, fingers handling another game piece thoughtfully.

_I knew him better than all but one._

Ptolemy has been working faithfully at his _History_ for some time now and often he comes to Bagoas for a detail he wouldn't have known personally and together they reminisce, trading stories of a time long gone. Bagoas knows his name will largely be left out of these written histories. For the greatest man the world had ever known to love a Persian eunuch would never be accepted. Ptolemy knows this, but he also knows what Bagoas had truly been to Alexander. It warms Bagoas to know this.

“Write him true,” Bagoas says softly, fingers restless now against the sleeves of his robe as Alexander's face swims in his mind. He is all around them as they speak of him in soft, intimate tones. Knowing and walking beside this man of men had been an honor neither of them had taken lightly.

“I loved him as you did. As we all did,” Ptolemy says in answer. “What I put down here-” Ptolemy taps the parchment resting beside his elbow, “-is Alexander as we knew him to be.” Ruthless to the traitorous, respected by his enemies, merciful to the conquered, loved by his people. Even into the desert they had followed him, knowing they would die. But they loved him, worshiped the fire in him, and would have followed him down into Hades if he had told them it must be so.

Alexander had always prized the love of his friends and lovers above all else. No love was ever turned away. He was an enigma not even Bagoas would ever truly be able to piece together. He wonders now if Hephaistion, the one who had held this enigma in the palm of his hand, had rejoined him in the afterlife, if perhaps they had fulfilled that old childhood dream of eternity together.

_Philalexandros_ Hephaistion's tomb had proclaimed proudly.

“I think it's time we gutter the fire.” Bagoas makes a show of yawning, of packing away their unfinished game for another night. Some wounds will never be healed, even with the passing of time..

“Alexander had a place for every one of the people he held close,” Ptolemy says as he takes a sip of his wine, eyes sweeping over the passage he has written between the game and their conversation, “it was a place just for them. It was as if he knew you the moment he set those dark eyes on you and ever after you were special to him.” Ptolemy heaves himself from the table and moves to stand beside Bagoas' chair.

“Of course, some were more special than others.” Here, Ptolemy lays a hand on Bagoas' shoulder and gives him a secret sort of smile. “I remember when you first came into camp, just a little thing on the heals of Nabarzanes. You held your head high even though you were being given away to your lover's enemy. Everyone saw your face and knew where you would end up.”

“In the bed of another king,” Bagoas agrees, and makes a dramatic bow as he stands, hoping to get a laugh out of Ptolemy, but Ptolemy merely leans against the cane he has begun to use more often in the company of friends. His strength has not completely abandoned him but the wars he had been through beside Alexander have begun to wear on him as of late.

“In the heart of the greatest of kings,” Ptolemy corrects him and then laughs lightly, “you were never stupid and that was your saving grace, perhaps the very reason he loved you. Alexander needed intelligence and wit around him, not mere beauty. You cannot agonize forever over if your place was above or below anyone else. Alexander kept you by his side because he was proud of you and everyone saw and envied you. Remember that the next time you go around pouting those lips of yours,” Ptolemy laughs again as Bagoas' face heats considerably.

“See me off now,” Ptolemy tells him, sweeping up his scattered parchment and holding his arm out to Bagoas who takes it with a tight face. He bites the inside of his cheek as he helps Ptolemy down the long hallway to his bedchamber and wills himself not to let himself show weakness.

_In the heart of the greatest of kings._

His road had been a long one to that honored place, and yet the time spent there had been too short, would have never been enough. Eternity was what he had wished for, but all he'd been left with were dusty memories and an ache inside the ruined cavity of his chest.

 

_God_

   

 

He has seen those eyes before. Storm eyes. Gray and deep, something that could be quickened to fire in a moment with the changing of moods. He isn't a golden boy, but he's beautiful, and for a moment, Bagoas feels the breath knocked from his chest. He had taken strands of gold from the funeral bed and they still shone bright as they had the day he'd seen Alexander ride into the sun and he had pledged himself with his heart in his throat. Alexander has left no gold in his wake, but the treasure Bagoas keeps in a gilded box, and now this boy-- Alexander incarnate.

Years wash over him as he watches the boy making his way across the field. He has the look of Roxana in most ways but the most important. Bagoas could call him one of his own if it weren't for those eyes and the way he carries himself. No prostration for this one.

The boy knows who his father was, has grown up on the tales of lions and wars and fire. Perhaps he thinks of himself as another Aléxandros as his father had played at being Achilles as a child. Or perhaps, he was just a boy, wanting only to survive another year.

It has been long since he’s seen Roxana as well. The years have drawn her face into a mask of worry and she hovers over the boy, understandably, and he knows what most of these men see when they look at them both together. Alexander and Olympias, and they all know the danger.

Egypt has made Bagoas soft, soothed the years of fear and tension from his body, but the lust for the world had died with Alexander. He feels it again for a moment, that rush of breath, as he watches this relic of the past from afar. He remembers the excitement of new lands and the way they had all been seduced by youth, unconquered, divine.

The excitement dies as quickly as it has come. He sees the mark on this boy's head and knows he won't survive the year. They will stamp out the fire before it sparks. They see it on the horizon too, but they cannot not relive that dream. There will only ever be one Alexander and they had been there to see his rise and fall.

Bagoas looks away as the boy slips into the arms of men who will protect him, who will fight for him, who will slip a knife into his back once a stronger adversary make himself known despite Roxana's efforts. Even Olympias had been quietly rid of when heads were turned.

They had all tasted ash on their tongues and felt the fire singe their skin black.

They had all fallen in the end.

 

 

 

 

[ Azam Ali - In Other Worlds  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AlA9FMHXqE&ab_channel=RaisinEventAgency)

 


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